In illumination and display applications, it is desirable to uniformly illuminate a diffuser screen using the minimal number of LEDs. In these applications, side emission with reduced or suppressed top emission is preferred. However many LEDs are Lambertian emitters that emit light in an omnidirectional pattern. Thus what is needed is an LED packaging technique that transforms Lambertian emitters into LEDs with variable number of emitting surfaces (hereafter “N-sided emitters”) with enhanced lateral radiation pattern into specific azimuthal directions.